Design
People over 75 now outnumber those aged 65 to 74
As of 1 October 2025, 17.3% of Japan's population is 75 or older, against 12.1% aged 65 to 74. What the phrase "designing for older users" refers to has quietly changed.
Of everything in Japan's 2026 White Paper on the Ageing Society, one line has the most direct consequences for product work.
As of 1 October 2025, people aged 75 and over make up 17.3% of the population, while those aged 65 to 74 make up 12.1%. The older group is now the larger one.
Total population is 123.22 million, with 36.22 million aged 65 and over, an ageing rate of 29.4%. By 2070 the projection is that one person in 2.6 will be 65 or older.
The meaning of "older user" changed
The older user most companies have designed for resembles someone aged 65 to 74. Around retirement age, owns a smartphone, used a computer during their working life.
That group is now the smaller one.
People over 75 differ in ways that matter to an interface.
- Vision has changed further. Small type and low contrast palettes stop being readable
- Fine motor precision declines. Small buttons placed close together stop being separable
- Short term memory load is less tolerated. Patterns that require remembering something from the previous screen stop working
- A larger share never used a computer as part of their job
All of these sit inside what design can address. Addressing them requires updating who you think you are designing for.
What the numbers imply
Combine this with the international comparison from the previous article.
Among Japanese over 65: 10.0% bank online, 9.2% complete government procedures online, 0.3% use online medical consultation.
Most of those 36.22 million people are outside these services. And the majority within that group has now shifted to the over 75s.
Where a service has not updated its assumptions, the number of people it excludes will grow every year from here.
Numbers you can design to
Including people over 75 gives you concrete thresholds.
Type size. 16px minimum for body text. In Japanese, a slight increase in letter spacing on a gothic face improves legibility.
Contrast. 4.5 to 1 minimum for body text, 7 to 1 for comfort. Light greys from a brand palette usually fail here.
Tap targets. 44px minimum, with real spacing between adjacent elements. Test it on a device with a finger rather than a cursor.
Options per screen. Fewer options produce higher completion. Sequential steps beat parallel choices.
Timeouts. Any screen with a time limit needs a way to extend it. A design that discards progress on expiry loses this group reliably.
Designing for people over 75 is not about adding special features. It is about removing the strain that younger users were absorbing without mentioning it.
The secondary benefit
These thresholds help far more people than the group they target.
Someone reading a screen in bright sunlight. Someone with one hand occupied. Someone tired. Someone operating in their second language. There is always a share of users in poor conditions.
Design to the over 75s and all of those cases improve. Design for a healthy thirty year old in ideal conditions and everyone else gets a slightly worse product.
The demographics have already changed. Whether the design assumptions change is a decision each company makes.